Plus, they knew me well at the Royal Opera House. I’d sung there twice before—once with Pavarotti (when he did his disappearing act during our duet in Ballo in ’95) and the second time in Die Frau ohne Schatten in 2001. It was no secret to anyone what I looked like when I signed on for the role; it’s not like the director hired a new singer from a headshot. Covent Garden’s artistic administrator, Peter Katona, could have easily, and should have, told the director to alter the dress and get on with it. But that didn’t happen. Even though I had a signed and fully executed contract, they wanted to recast the role.
“Fine,” Andrea told them.
Andrea wasn’t the brash, in-your-face Herbert Breslin type. He came from an aristocratic British family on his father’s side—his brother was in Princess Diana’s wedding party, for heaven’s sake! And his gorgeous Italian mother came from a well-to-do family in Rome where they still had an enormous family estate that he visited regularly in the off-season. Andrea embodied elegance, efficiency, and a Zenlike confidence and spirituality.
“What role,” he calmly asked the Covent Garden people, “do you intend to give Debbie to sing instead?”
Common protocol dictated that if an opera house removed a vocalist with a fully executed contract from a part, they were required to offer another role of equal “value” or pay out the contract in full.
“We don’t have anything,” they told him.
There was a pause on Andrea’s end. Some back-and-forth ensued—the details of which he never disclosed to me because he’s a gentleman—before Andrea swiftly insisted upon arrangements for my payout. I was hurt about the situation, for sure, but I had no intention of making a fuss over it. Andrea handled the legal particulars and the case was closed.
Until a few months later, when I gave an interview to a reporter from a major London daily to publicize an upcoming recital. I went to dinner with my new publicist, Albert Imperato, at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in New York, and the reporter was meeting me there after dinner. Albert has the swarthy good looks of an Italian male model coupled with the bright eyes, energy, and enthusiasm of a rambunctious kid. He was excited about the interview, and after dinner he made the introductions and waited at the bar while I chatted with the reporter. Had he stayed at the table, who knows what might have turned out differently—the interview, my weight, my life! As it was, I was alone with the reporter and I was in a truth-telling mood. All was going swimmingly until the reporter asked:
“So when will you come back to sing at the Royal Opera House?”
I hemmed and hawwed. I hadn’t spoken about the incident to the media, and I wasn’t sure if I should. Because my contract to sing Ariadne was for a future season that hadn’t been announced yet, no one knew of my casting of and subsequent un-casting from the role. What happened wasn’t hushed up, per se . . . but I’m sure the Royal Opera House never thought I’d speak of it, and neither did I for that matter. We all thought it would just go away.
But he asked, and now he was waiting. Hummanahummanahummana. I didn’t know what to say. They say the truth shall set you free, so I leaned in that direction.
“Well, I don’t think I’m coming back,” I answered.
The reporter’s eyes widened. “Why not?”
“Well . . . I was supposed to be back to sing Ariadne, and . . .”
“What happened?”
“They decided I wouldn’t ‘work’ in their production.”
The reporter leaned in.
“You wouldn’t work? What does that mean?”
He knew he was on to something. He knew I was one of the leading Ariadnes in the world and that what I was saying made no sense. As I sat there, trying to explain, I was getting pissed off thinking about it—maybe I was having a delayed reaction. What should I say to this guy? That Covent Garden didn’t think I was talented enough? That they couldn’t find anything else for me to sing? Or should I say I didn’t want to sing there? Should I lie? Why should I protect them? The only thing left to say, the only thing I could say, was the truth. I didn’t think about the fallout.
“They said I was too fat,” I told him. “I’m too fat for their concept.”
And that was it. The minute I said it, the beans came spilling out. I didn’t think they would fall further than the local London papers. I didn’t imagine the interview would go around the world, reaching Dubai, Thailand, . . .
I went over to the bar after the interview and told Albert what had happened. I saw a fraction of a second of worry on his handsome face, then he brushed it aside. “I’m sure everything will be fine,” he said, in his molto positive way.
Two weeks later, while I was performing in Switzerland, Albert rang me up.
“Um, Deb. That interview you gave? It’s taken on a life of its own. I just wanted to warn you that you might be getting some calls from the ladies and gentlemen of the press.”
Then the media hurricane hit, and hit hard.
After I hung up with Albert, my phone rang nonstop. I got interview requests from every major news publication in the world and landed on the couch of Good Morning America to discuss the new hot topic: Has Opera Gone Too Hollywood? A lot of people, especially Covent Garden’s music director, Tony Pappano, believed I’d released the story to get publicity because I had a CD, Obsessions, coming out around that time. I only wish I was that smart!
My firing was making such big news because it baffled people. We lived in the world where “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” and people expected their opera singers to be big. I wasn’t an actress expected to starve for a TV role on Ally McBeal. So to hear that an opera singer, of all people, would be fired for being too fat—not to mention an internationally famous singer in a role she was internationally famous for singing—was ludicrous, even to non-opera lovers.
And while we’re on the topic, why is it okay for the male opera stars to be big and not the women? The double standard is alive and well in the opera world when it comes to men’s and women’s bodies. When I was singing Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Met a few years earlier with plus-sized tenor Ben Heppner, I got my foot caught in my dress as I was getting up off the floor of the stage. It was embarrassing, to be sure, but it’s the kind of thing that happens, to big girls and little girls alike. The review in one newspaper the next day reported that “Voigt’s performance was impeded by her girth,” while “Ben Heppner had the shoulders of a linebacker.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read articles that praise the huggable, teddy-bear roundness of Pavarotti.
Yet today, in retrospect, I can understand why Covent Garden didn’t want me in the role. When I look back at pictures of myself that year, I look like a poster child for obesity. True, there are actual physical reasons why opera singers are traditionally big in stature—having a bigger chest cavity is often what gives a vocalist the depth, range, and strength to sing those powerful arias. But if a person is grossly obese, it becomes distracting. If you walk out onstage at 400 pounds, it’s like seeing a drunk alcoholic or a stoned drug addict in front of you—you see the problem, the addiction, not the performance.
Did the firing influence me to do something about my weight? No. I had been trying since I was seventeen to lose weight in every way imaginable. And at the time when I lost that role I’d already consulted with a doctor about gastric bypass surgery. The irony is that the fee Covent Garden paid me for not singing gave me the money and the time to do the surgery.
But first, one has to poke a little fun at the whole craziness, no?
A month after the media exploded with the story, I made my Carnegie Hall recital debut. What better arena in which to make a statement?
When I walked out onstage to thunderous applause, you could feel the question hanging in the air: Is she going to say something about it or not? You betcha. I waited until the end of the evening, until my encore, when I sang a parody song called “Wagner Roles.” It was written by Ben Moore, who’s penned several songs I’ve recorded (two years later, Ben would al
so write the parody, “We’re Very Concerned,” which I sang at Joe Volpe’s retirement tribute gala). In the lyrics for “Wagner Roles,” I lament about how I’m only offered Wagner roles and why can’t I sing something light and fun? Like Rossini? Or Johann Strauss, instead of the darker, more brooding Richard?
Then I sing the line:
“And this business we’re in, well, it’s really a mess; not to mention the deal with the little black dress . . .”
The hall went nuts. The audience cheered and yelled so loudly, I had to stop singing because I couldn’t hear anything. It was great fun, and my way to provide a little humor to the situation and say: Let’s get past this now and put on a show.
THE NIGHT BEFORE I went under the knife for gastric bypass surgery—it was July 2004—I had a “last meal” the same way a convict on death row does before execution. I ate a thick medium-rare steak and baked potato, downed a few cocktails, and scarfed down a gigantic dessert smothered with whipped cream. It felt like saying goodbye to best friends who’d been there for me in my times of need, but now I was moving on, to another life, and might never see them again.
From the moment I woke up, the weight, as they say, fell off me. The first week I was eating half a jar of baby food for each meal—pureed chicken, beef, vegetables—and I lost ten pounds. It was the easiest “diet” I’d ever been on, because the most shocking thing happened. I’d take a few spoonfuls of the baby food and feel full. I don’t know if I’d ever really felt full before in my life. If anything, I had a new problem: how to eat enough to get the calories I needed to stay healthy. That was a new one.
Every day when I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I saw myself disappearing. Or maybe it was simply that the real Debbie was emerging from underneath layers and years of pain eating. The Germans have a brilliant word for the fat gained when you eat from sadness: Kummerspeck, which translates literally as “grief fat”—or, “grief bacon,” or even “sad pig lard.” Ouch. Way back, when that voice teacher at Chapman College would force me to look in the mirror as I sang and I’d burst into tears, that’s exactly what I was seeing when I looked at myself—grief fat.
But even more amazing than the weight coming off so easily was that I stopped thinking about food all the time. I marveled at that and wondered if the doctor hadn’t cut out a part of my brain.
That first year, I lost over a hundred pounds, and followed that with various skin-tightening surgeries to adapt to the quick weight loss. My self-image, however, was slower to adapt—there should have been a surgery for that, too. Although my eyes could see me getting smaller when I looked in the mirror, my subconscious lagged behind and still thought of me as a fat girl. I kept dressing in the same old baggy pants and tentlike muumuus, until my new part-time assistant and stylist, Jaime, insisted on going shopping with me. I had hired Jaime to fill in when Jesslyn was out of town. She was young, fun, and voluptuously beautiful—she, too, struggled with weight, so she understood my mentality.
I’d emerge from fitting rooms at Bloomingdale’s, saying, “Look, aren’t these pants great?” and she’d say:
“No! They’re not! Debbie, these are two sizes too big for you, can’t you see that?” She’d pull at the extra fabric like it was my old, stretched-out skin—my old sausage casing.
“Are you sure?”
“Debbie, it’s okay if the clothes touch your body. That means they fit.”
I had no idea.
Life as a nonobese person took some getting used to those first few years. Moments other people take for granted were for me red-letter days. Like the first time I was able to fit into an economy seat on an airplane without having to raise the armrest, and—imagine this—able to fit into the tiny airplane bathroom! I traveled so much for my work and always had to be careful about what I ate and drank before getting on a transatlantic flight because it was so difficult for me to get into the darn bathroom. Let me tell ya, 333 pounds, my all-time high before my surgery, does not fit onto that tiny plastic seat. Same goes for movie theaters, which I used to avoid because my body would overflow from my seat onto the seats and strangers next to me.
I WAS SOON to learn that for as many postsurgery triumphs as I experienced, I also had difficulties. For every twenty or twenty-five pounds lost, I had to make major adjustments in order to feel comfortable singing. Suddenly I felt like I wasn’t connected to my body, as if my voice had lost its home, its base. When we sing, we engage certain muscles to support the sound, like having a girdle press on the abdominal muscles. When you’re over three hundred pounds and you take a breath, all that fat sitting on you automatically does extra girdle duty for you; the weight presses down and helps engage the musculature. You don’t really have to think about it, it happens automatically. But now, I didn’t have the extra weight for support and compression. I felt physically shaky, ungrounded. It wasn’t an easy transition—much more difficult than I expected, or had been warned.
The critics attending my early, postsurgery performances were quick to point out the change in my voice.
“She used to sound more golden, now she sounds more shrill”—I’ve seen that in print a few times since my surgery. Those reviews were difficult to read, especially because my presurgery reviews were often so admiring. Not that I put much weight—forgive the pun—on reviews. I don’t read them anymore because they can be upsetting if you are having an off night. You can’t become an international opera star if you don’t consistently give good performances; but everyone has an off night once in a while. And when you do, it’s not the audience or critics who judge you the harshest—the audience, in fact, is especially forgiving. It’s the administration, the ones who do the hiring and firing, who don’t always understand the organic and mercurial ups and downs of a voice. In my early days onstage, James Levine, whom I called Jimmy, taught me to accept the ebb and flow of my instrument.
During a performance one night at the Met, I had screwed up a note in an aria. Jimmy called my dressing room during a break—in those days, I was his dramatic soprano darling and he’d call me in between every act to touch base. I hadn’t messed up the note too badly—I’ve never gone onstage and cracked a note like a strangled dog. But that night, the note didn’t sit right and I knew it. I was berating myself in my dressing room when he called.
“Jimmy, I’m so sorry that note didn’t go well.”
“Oh, baby,” he said, in that resonant, deep voice he has. His grandfather was a cantor, and Jimmy’s voice had a sort of Old Testament resonance to it. “We’re human beings, not machines.”
I’ve never forgotten his words. The whole beauty of live performance is that anything can, and will, happen, good and bad. If you have a great conductor like Jimmy Levine, he can help you through a rough spot. During rehearsals once for Ariadne, I was having technical difficulties. At one point the score called for me to drop into a low part of my voice from a high G to a very low G in the aria “Es gibt ein Reich” when I sang the word Totenreich—meaning, “the realm of the dead” or “the netherworld.”
I couldn’t settle into the note, my voice didn’t want to go there. Jimmy was probably one of the few conductors able understand instinctively what I needed to do—he knows more about singing and vocal repertoire than anyone on the planet. I had to take more time, I had to give the note a proper setup. I wasn’t breathing correctly, I was too fearful of the scary note, he told me.
As we approached the dreaded Totenreich low G during our first performance, I looked at Jimmy and he looked at me. He gave me a reassuring look and he took a breath with me. With that breath, he gave me the freedom and the belief that I could do it. We connected in that moment, two artists together inside the music, and everything aligned perfectly. I knew exactly what he meant for me to do, and I did it, and it worked—my note was perfect. It was like being inside each other’s minds, it was so intimate. It was like Spock’s Vulcan mind-meld in Star Trek. In the same way that Jane was a musician-whisperer, Jimmy was a voice-whisperer. After
our mind-meld, I never had a problem with that note again.
BUT BACK TO my weight loss—I don’t believe it changed my voice for the worse, I just had to think more about how I moved, and how to support the air. It took me a lot longer than I thought it would to feel my voice was back to normal, to where it was before the surgery. Voices change and evolve for many reasons—menopause, age, overuse, and just life. A voice is naturally bound to change over a ten-year period in the same way one’s body changes. Also, if I have a different sound today, it may be due to my transition in repertoire. I’ve gone from singing the arias of a spinto soprano in roles like Aida and Tosca, to heavy hitters like Brünnhilde, which is a totally different vocal category.
Sometimes a role doesn’t work for you because of bad timing.
My experience with Strauss’s Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier was hit and miss. I was first contracted to sing the role for a run in Vancouver in the fall of 2004, a few months after my surgery. At the time I was living full time in my Florida condo, the exact spot where two devastating hurricanes were about to hit within three weeks of each other.
I had reached beautiful Vancouver, Canada—literally, at the other side of the continent from my home—days before the first hurricane hit, and when I saw the devastation on the news after rehearsal that day I panicked. I had no idea what, if any, damage had been done to my home and couldn’t concentrate during the rest of the rehearsals. Furthermore, hurricane number two was in the works and ready to hit. All I could think about was getting back home to batten down the hatches, as they say. The management knew I was distracted and I knew I couldn’t do the part justice because of it. Since we were all in agreement I called Andrea and told him, “I want out.” It was one of the few times I had ever done that.
I made it to my condo before the second hurricane hit. The first one hadn’t done any real damage, so I decided I’d bravely stay and ride out the second one until it was over. Everyone else in the condo had pulled down their aluminum, impact-resistant, hurricane-proof windows and doors and abandoned ship; everyone except me and one couple in the whole twelve-storey building had evacuated. That should have given me a clue. The night before the second hurricane was to hit, I heard a crash on the roof. The wind had blown part of the roof loose and it was slamming against the building like a wrecking ball.
Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva Page 18
